As climate-change lawsuits against the oil industry mount, Exxon Mobil Corp. is taking a bare-knuckle approach rarely seen in legal disputes: It’s going after the lawyers who are suing it. Exxon has even given that campaign a vaguely sinister-sounding name: “The La Jolla playbook.” —Bloomberg, 13 February 2018

For the second year in a row, “electricity is making up a smaller share of U.S. household bills than ever before,” a fact that can be traced directly to the fact that natural gas has retained its position as the No. 1 electricity generation producer in the U.S. in 2017. —Energy In-depth, 15 February 2018

If you thought the Great War, Stalin’s Purges or the Holocaust were bad, think Again. They pale in comparison with climate change, which the United Nations has dubbed “the greatest threat we have ever faced.”

Climate alarmists often fail to see the irony behind their own hyperbole. The more hysterical their claims become the more average, thinking citizens grow skeptical of whether things could really be as bad as certain environmentalists contend.

A new scientific study says surface temperatures in the Northeastern U.S. (Appalachian Mountains) have undergone a significant long-term cooling trend since the early 20th century, complicating the detection of a clear anthropogenic global warming (AGW) signal for the region.

According to Eck (2018), the two coldest Appalachian winters since 1910 were recorded in recent years (2009-’10 and 2010-’11), and 9 of the 10 warmest winters occurred prior to 1960.

CCD Editor’s Note: The following is a letter sent to MIT’s Climate Action Plan committee. He has made it available to the public.

Dear MIT Climate Actors,

I, an MIT alum, was just looking at MIT’s so-called Climate Action Plan, particularly its advisory committee, to see if there were any skeptical climate scientists on it — science that doesn’t allow a diversity of opinions is not science.

Not only were there no skeptical climate scientists on it, there were no real climate scientists at all!

The bone-chilling cold and icy winds in Pyeongchang have contributed to any number of wipe-outs for Olympic skiers and snowboarders, not to mention a public-relations face plant for the climate-change movement.

Its dire warnings about how the Winter Olympics face an existential threat from global warming have been all but buried by the flurry of reports about frigid conditions at the 2018 games in South Korea, which are expected to set an Olympic record for cold temperatures.

No one should be surprised that the Winter Olympics, just like the NFL, is no longer primarily a sporting event. Instead of ice-skating and skiing, the major sport in the Olympics is media virtue-signaling over race, gender, and climate.

Not surprisingly, TV ratings are down for the winter games, just as they were for the latest NFL season. The big media are swooning over Rocket Man’s sister, demonstrating that journalists have never met a communist dictator they didn’t immediately fall in love with, whether Castro, Gorbachev, or Che Guevara.

Organizations give awards to recognize those individuals who best display the values that organization seeks to represent and uphold. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the leading scientific organization in the United States.

From a vast pool of excellent scientists who engage with the public, the AAAS has decided in 2018 to give its prestigious award for Public Engagement with Science to climate scientist, Michael E. Mann.